Eldritch Guidance

After John had finished his tea and sandwich, and Yin had scraped the last vestiges of cream from her parfait glass, they parted ways with a warm farewell. When John approached the counter to settle his bill, the staff member, Lise, waved him off with a smile.

Lise: "Miss Yin already took care of everything, Mr. Li," she said.

“She really didn't need to do that,” John thought, a mixture of gratitude and mild embarrassment warming his cheeks. “But I suppose now that she's so successful, this is her way of giving back. Treating old friends. She always was a good-natured girl at heart; it probably makes her genuinely happy, these small acts of kindness.”

His internal monologue was a testament to his profound, almost charming ignorance, completely unaware that the woman he'd just shared a dessert with was a crime lord and had orchestrated a small scale social revolution, effectively eradicating homelessness and destitution across an entire district—an act so vast it dwarfed the concept of "small" entirely.

Stepping out onto the bustling street, John stretched his limbs, working out the slight stiffness from sitting. He squinted up at the sun, judging its position in the pale afternoon sky. There was still plenty of daylight left; the evening was hours away.

Lunar: "Woof!" it barked, a sound that seemed to vibrate with agreement, as if the hound had perfectly read his master's contemplative mood.

John looked down and gave Lunar a warm smile, ruffling the fur on top of the Malumut's head. Lunar's tail thumped a happy rhythm against John's leg.

John: "Alright, you've convinced me," John said. "Let's take the long way home."

He turned, intending to head down a quieter, tree-lined avenue, and promptly jumped back with a startled gasp. He had nearly walked directly into the chest of a tall, gaunt figure: the old man with piercing red eyes and a walking cane topped with a silver skull—Onyx.

John: "Ahh!" he stumbled back two steps, his heart hammering against his ribs, before he managed to straighten his jacket and compose himself.

Onyx: "Good afternoon, John," it said. His voice was a dry rustle, and the smile that stretched his lips was a meticulous, soulless imitation of human warmth that made John's skin crawl. It was the expression of a thing that had studied smiles in a manual but had never felt the emotion behind one.

No matter how normal Onyx tried to appear, John understood the terrifying truth. This was not a man. It was a horrific, eldritch entity merely wearing human skin as a convenient disguise.

Onyx: "By the way," it added, his crimson eyes flicking briefly toward the sky with a look of genuine uncertainty, "it is afternoon, correct?"

Comments like that were chilling reminders of its true nature. Onyx existed outside the simple, linear flow of time that governed mortal lives, perceiving it as a confusing, abstract concept it could only barely grasp.

John: "Yeah…" he managed, his voice tight. He fought to keep his breathing even, acutely aware of the ordinary people passing by on the street, completely oblivious to the ancient, unfathomable horror standing casually in their midst.

Onyx: “Shall we walk and talk?” it suggested, the silver skull on his cane glinting as it gestured down the bustling street. It was less a question and more a statement of impending fact.

John gave a tight, hesitant nod and began to walk, setting a brisk pace. Lunar followed closely at his heel, the large Malumut casting frequent, low growls back at the red-eyed entity, its body tense and ears flattened in primal apprehension.

They moved through the afternoon crowd, a stream of shoppers and workers, yet no one gave the trio a second glance. The two men with unsettling crimson eyes and the massive, wary white dog should have been a spectacle, but they moved as if insulated by a bubble of perceptual static, their presence simply sliding off the awareness of every passerby.

Onyx: “So,” they began, his voice a dry rustle beside John. “Was the tea… good? You drink tea because it is good, correct?” He articulated the word “good” with the careful precision of a linguist trying out a new, unfamiliar term.

John: “Yeah… it was good,” he replied, his own voice guarded.

Onyx: “Interesting,” they mused, the gears of its alien cognition almost audible. “So, does that mean you are enjoying… your new life? Because… the tea is good?” He seemed to be piecing together a fundamental theorem of existence from these mundane fragments, attempting to correlate sensory pleasure with the complex state of being.

John: “It’s complicated,” he deflected, the understatement of the century.

Onyx: “I see…” it replied, a flicker of what might have been understanding in his depthless eyes. “I am finding that out myself. Limitations are, in their way, far greater than the infinite. The need to choose a single path, to experience one thing at a time… it is a profound constraint.” He paused, then added, “I have also noticed your attitude is changing towards me. Less… immediate terror. More… weary tolerance. So, my visits seem to be helping.”

John: “Is that why you keep suddenly appearing randomly before me?” he asked, a sliver of frustration piercing his fear. “To ‘help’ me get used to you?”

Onyx: “Perhaps…” it relied, the word hanging in the air, infuriatingly vague.

John: “Perhaps? Why are you so unsure? I thought you said you wouldn’t hide anything from me?”

Onyx met his gaze, the red pools of his eyes unnervingly steady.

Onyx: “I promise you, I would never lie to you. I will tell you whatever you wish to know, provided you ask the right question. And, I suppose you could say I am unsure. I think I lack the vocabulary, or perhaps the fundamental understanding, to articulate why I appear beyond the simple fact that I am here to help you.” He tilted his head, a bird-like gesture of contemplation. “Or, maybe it is more apt to say… because I must. Maybe.”

John: “You must?” he pressed, the word carrying a weight that frightened him. “Why must you?”

Onyx was silent for a long moment, the sounds of the city fading into an indistinct hum around them.

Onyx: “I do not know if there is a word in your language that can convey the reason properly to you,” he said finally, his tone carrying a hint of what might have been genuine regret. “It is not a choice. It is not a desire. It is a condition of my existence in relation to yours. Like gravity. The apple does not ‘choose’ to fall. It simply must.”

John grumbled low in his throat, a sound of pure frustration. Each interaction with Onyx was like trying to grasp smoke; he felt he was gaining a slightly better intuition for the entity's nature, but for every question answered, a dozen more, deeper and more unsettling, sprouted in its place. He decided to take a risk, to test the boundaries of Onyx's proclaimed benevolence.

John: "You keep saying you're here to help me, right?" he began, choosing his words with the care of a man navigating a field of invisible landmines. "I've never asked you for anything. But if I did... could you..." He faltered, the words "grant a wish" feeling both too childish and dangerously apt.

Onyx: "Grant you a wish?" it finished, his tone devoid of mockery, merely observational.

John: "Kinda, I guess. Except," John pressed on, his gaze sharpening, "I know you've been going around making Faustian bargains with other people. So, if I did ask, it would have to be without the whole 'screwing me over with wordplay' thing. A clean deal."

Onyx's lips curved into a thin, knowing smile.

Onyx:"Of course. We promised that we would never harm you, directly or indirectly. At least, not intentionally."

The qualifier—not intentionally—sent an icy jolt down John's spine. It was a stark reminder that Onyx operated on a logic as alien as his origin. A request made with the best of intentions could have catastrophic, unforeseen consequences simply because Onyx's understanding of cause and effect was fundamentally different. John pictured himself asking for world peace and accidentally being turned into a cosmic paperweight for all eternity.

Onyx: "Keep in mind," it continued, as if reading his fears, "if I do things for you, it cannot violate the Compacts of this world—the fundamental rules under which we must operate."

A sliver of hope sparked in John. Rules were something he could understand.

John: "Well, what are these Compacts? And, how many are there?" he asked, trying to sound pragmatic. "Just so I know what I can't ask for."

Onyx: "There are," he stated with terrifying precision, "456,234,537,776,323,010,654,634,645,532,543,009 Compacts that cannot be violated.” The number rolled off his tongue with effortless precision. "Should I explain them from the beginning?"

John's mind reeled, staggering under the weight of a number so vast it was meaningless. He didn't know the names of the numbers past a trillion, and this… this was a figure that could likely count every atom in the universe and still have plenty left over. He stared, dumbfounded, a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead. He had a sudden, horrifying vision of Onyx, with his poor grasp of linear time, earnestly beginning to list them all, continuing unabated as civilizations rose and fell, until the stars themselves winked out of existence from the heat death of the universe.

John: "That's… a lot," he finally managed, his voice a weak whisper.

Onyx: "Is it?" it asked, his head tilting in genuine curiosity. The sheer scale of the restriction was clearly mundane from its perspective.

John: "Yes. It is," he said, forcing his mind back from the brink of existential vertigo. "How about instead, I ask you if a specific thing can be done, and you just tell me 'yes' or 'no'?"

Onyx considered this for a moment, then gave a slow, deliberate nod.

Onyx: "A most efficient and prudent solution. Very well."

As they walked, the rhythmic tap of Onyx's cane a counterpoint to the city's hum, John carefully constructed his questions. He decided to employ a simple, if audacious, strategy: start with the grandest scale and work his way down, mapping the boundaries of the possible.

“Alright, let's see how deep this goes. Maybe I'll start with something big and work my way down.”

John: "Hypothetically," he began, choosing his words with the care of a man defusing a bomb, "if I asked for something like... world peace. Would that be possible? I mean, there's a terrible war going on in Gix right now."

Onyx didn't break stride.

Onyx: "I would have said 'yes' before, as hypothesis and reality are, from a certain perspective, the same thing—two sides of the same coin, I think the saying is." He paused, the silver skull on his cane catching the light. "But, for your understanding, the answer is no. There are many Compacts that would be violated, but the two most relevant to your conceptual framework are the Compacts of Free Will and Personal Autonomy. The 'world peace' you are imagining is a state of being, not an event. To impose it and maintain it would require the systematic and continuous overriding of the innate will to conflict, to dominate, to disagree. It would, by its very nature, violate both free will and autonomy in its execution."

John was taken aback. He had expected the usual cryptic, one-word dismissal, not a lecture. The detailed explanation was more unnerving than a simple one word response.

John: "I... see," he stammered, thrown off balance.

Onyx: "I assumed you wanted more information," they said, itshead tilting a fraction. "That is why I gave you more than a 'yes' or 'no' answer. Was that an incorrect understanding on my part?" The question felt less like a query and more like a direct response to John's unvoiced surprise, as if Onyx was tuning into the frequency of his bewilderment.

John: "S-Stop reading my mind," he said, a flush of violation warming his neck.

Onyx: "I am not reading your mind," it replied with infuriating calm. "As I have explained before."

Feeling flustered and exposed, it took John a moment to regain his composure. He latched onto a contradiction, a potential flaw in Onyx's logic.

John: "You said you can't violate free will or personal autonomy. But you told me that story about the deal you made with that man who wanted more gold, and you... killed him. Doesn't facilitating his death violate those Compacts in some way?"

Onyx: "Not at all," it stated, his tone one of pure, dispassionate logic. "He entered into a contract of his own free will. No coercion was applied; his autonomy was entirely intact. The terms were clear. Therefore, within the confines of the agreement, it is more apt to say that the person you are referring to was the agent of his own demise. I merely provided the circumstances. He killed himself. I did very little."

“Okay, so the main takeaway here is that I can absolutely get myself killed if I ask for the wrong thing,” John thought, the realization settling in his stomach like a cold stone. The possibility was real, but it was a minefield.

Onyx: "We will not allow you to unintentionally harm yourself, John," they stated, his voice cutting through John's internal alarm with jarring immediacy.

John: "You... you..." he stuttered, a fresh wave of violation washing over him. He took a sharp breath, forcing himself to calm down.

John: "Okay... moving on," he said, deliberately shifting his focus to more tangible, less personally dangerous requests. "Can you change the weather? Make it rain, or stop a storm?"

Onyx: "No," it replied without hesitation. "There are many Compacts that prevent direct manipulation of planetary systems. The weather is a consequence of too many interconnected variables."

John: "I see, I see," John murmured, filing that away.

“So no grand, environmental changes. Too broad.” He silently mused.

John decided to aim for something universally desired.

John: "Could you create, say... a cure for cancer?"

Onyx: "Yes," it said, and for a fleeting moment, John felt a spark of hope. It was instantly extinguished by Onyx's next words. "But you would not like the outcome."

John: "Why?" he asked, dread curdling in his gut.

Onyx: "Because the cure that this reality would permit us to create, within the strict confines of the Compacts, would be just as deadly as the disease. The most probable iteration would be a virulent retrovirus with a roughly fifty percent mortality rate. It would 'cure' the cancer by rewriting cellular function, but with severe side effects: irreversible neurological degradation, rendering the patient a mindless husk, or triggering uncontrolled somatic mutations, transforming them into something... else. I would recommend, if you desire a cure for such an ailment, that you create it yourself through your own world's science, or task another to do so."

John felt a chill that had nothing to do with the afternoon air.

John: "I see. That sounds... profoundly concerning." He paced a few steps, processing the horrifying logic. "But, I think I'm picking up what you're putting down! You're saying you can't create the cure for cancer as we'd envision it—a safe, reliable treatment. But you could cure the cancer itself, directly in a person."

A rare, almost approving glint flickered in Onyx's crimson eyes.

Onyx: "Most perceptive. That is correct. We can act upon the specific, but not create a new universal rule."

John: "I think I'm starting to get how you think... a little bit," he said, a thread of weary triumph in his voice. "I figured it had to be something like that. You said you could cure Cid of his petrification, so I assumed curing a single case of cancer would be trivial for you."

Onyx gazed out at the passing traffic, his expression unreadable.

Onyx: "It is all technically nothing to us, and everything, all at once."

John sighed and shook his head, the small victory feeling hollow. It was comments like that—the casual conflation of the impossible and the insignificant—that reminded him how vast the gulf between them truly was. Every fragment of understanding he gleaned only seemed to illuminate the sheer, terrifying scale of what he did not know.

John refocused, trying to map the strange, invisible boundaries of Onyx's power. Grand, world-altering requests were off the table, and even well-intentioned miracles came with horrific, literal-minded caveats. He needed something smaller, a personal test with no moral quandaries. His mind drifted back to the Cait House, to Yin's parfait, and the simple, mundane yearning it had sparked.

“It's small. It's personal. It's a biological flaw, not a philosophical one. If he can't even do this…”

Gathering his nerve, he finally asked,

John: "Could you... make me no longer lactose intolerant?" He braced for a convoluted explanation about the Compact of Digestive Autonomy or some other absurdity.

Onyx: "Yes," it said. No elaboration, no caveats. Just a simple, stark affirmation.

John: “Can you please do that for me?”

A few seconds of silence passed, marked only by the sound of their footsteps and the distant city noise. John waited for a sensation, a glow, a twinge—some sign that a fundamental aspect of his biology had been rewritten. Nothing happened.

John: "Um," he ventured, breaking the quiet, "could you do that right now, perchance?"

Onyx: "It was already done the moment you asked," they stated, as if commenting on the color of the sky.

John: "Really?" John said, instinctively patting his stomach. "But... I didn't feel anything." The absence of sensation was somehow more disconcerting than a burst of pain would have been.

Onyx: "Did you want to feel something?" they asked, his tone laced with genuine curiosity, as if John had expressed a desire for an unnecessary but entertaining special effect.

John: "Not necessarily," he admitted, "but I was expecting to feel something, or at least see you wave your hand around. Make a little show of it."

Onyx: "I do not need to wave my hands to move something from one place to another," it explained. "We do not use this world's magic. Its gestures and incantations are... decorative."

John: "Move something around?" he brow furrowed in confusion. "What do you mean? I asked you to cure my lactose intolerance."

Onyx: "The reason you are lactose intolerant is that your gut lacks a specific strain of bacteria that produces the enzyme lactase, which breaks down lactose sugar," they explained with the detached air of a professor. "Adhering to the Compacts, the most trivial action we are capable of is transference. I moved the requisite bacteria from a viable source into your digestive system. The 'cure' was an act of relocation."

The simplicity of the mechanism was startling. And in that moment, a dozen puzzle pieces clicked into place in John's mind with dizzying speed.

John: "I see..." he murmured. Then, his eyes widened. "Wait. Is that how the Mystic Emporium works?!"

Onyx: "Correct."

A wave of understanding washed over John.

John: "I get it now! The things that appear in the shop—the books from my world, the strange artifacts—they're not being created from nothing. They're being moved from somewhere else!"

Onyx: "That is incorrect," they said, his statement flat and absolute.

John stopped in his tracks.

John: "What? But you just said I was correct!"

Onyx: "The things that manifest within the Mystic Emporium are created, destroyed, recreated, reimagined, remade, unmade, imagined, dreamed, evaporated, molded, fragmented, reincarnated, transmigrated, lost, found, and..." he paused, as if selecting the least significant term from an infinite list, "...moved. Transference is but one minuscule facet of the whole process, and the simplest for your mind to grasp. It is the part that most closely resembles your reality's concept of cause and effect."

John groaned, bringing his hands to his temples. The fleeting moment of clarity shattered, replaced by the familiar, frustrating vertigo of trying to comprehend an intelligence that operated on another plane. He had barely understood, and now he understood even less.

John: “So, moving things is easily done, then…” he said, latching onto the one sliver of Onyx’s power that seemed to follow a logical, if cosmic, rule. He continued walking, the rhythmic tap of the cane a constant reminder of his companion’s presence.

Onyx: “Of course. It is a fundamental action. It is, in fact, the process by which you ended up in this world in the first place,” they stated, as if commenting on the method of postal delivery.

John:“Right… and I’m not even going to pretend I understand the other stuff you mentioned with the item appearing in the store,” he replied, shaking his head to clear the metaphysical vertigo. He steered the conversation back to his own, more practical needs. “Um, if you’re still willing to do things for me… would you be able to let me read this world’s language? Or is that a violation of some Compact?”

Onyx came to a gradual stop.

Onyx: “What do you mean, ‘to read’?” he asked, the concept seeming to hold no inherent meaning for him.

John: “You know,” he explained, falling back into the role of a patient instructor for the impossibly powerful alien. “Like reading books. Interpreting symbols on a page to understand a meaning.”

Onyx: “Can you not already do that?” they inquired, genuine confusion in his tone.

Frustration began to bubble up in John’s chest.

John: “I mean, I can see the words on the paper, but I can’t understand them. That’s what I’m asking for!”

Onyx: “You should be able to understand them,” they insisted.

John: “But I can’t!” John’s voice rose slightly, drawing a curious glance from a passerby who quickly averted their eyes.

Onyx: “You should be.”

John: “I’m telling you, I can’t read them!” he insisted, his hands clenching at his sides.

Onyx: “I am not sure I understand the problem, because you should be able to.”

John groaned, the sound full of exasperation. He was trapped in the same alien circular logic as when he’d tried to ask why he was brought here—a conversation that had gone nowhere fast.

Suddenly, Onyx moved. He stepped in front of John, leaning in with unnatural speed until his face was mere inches away. John’s muscles locked, a primal fear freezing him in place. Onyx’s crimson eyes, twin pools of ancient void, stared intensely into John’s own, studying them with a terrifying, clinical focus.

John: “Um, what are you doing?” he managed to whisper, his breath catching in his throat.

Onyx didn’t answer for a long moment.

Onyx: “Hmm. I see,” it finally mumbled, pulling back to a more comfortable, though still unnerving, distance. “So, written words are considered different from spoken words or thoughts. How annoyingly arbitrary. At least…I think it’s annoying?”

John: “Excuse me?”

Onyx: “Would you like me to explain why it seems you cannot read this world’s language in a manner you can comprehend?".

John: “I-I guess,” he stuttered, his heart still hammering.

Onyx: “When you were brought to this world, you were granted the ability to communicate with all sentient creatures. The method by which this was accomplished, without violating the Compacts, was by altering your eyes to their current hue.”

John: “My… my eyes?” John asked, his hand instinctively rising toward his face.

Onyx: “Yes. By the intrinsic rules governing this layer of existence, those who possess red eyes are granted the capacity to perceive… certain truths. All crimson orbs allow their bearers to see truth, though the specific nature of that truth is unique to the individual. In your case, minimal modification was required. Your red eyes are known in the native tongue of this reality as the ‘Eyes of Communion’. Any sentient being you look upon, or who meets your gaze, creates a bridge. It allows you to be understood by them, and them by you, transcending all linguistic barriers.”

John was stunned into silence. He had simply accepted the red eyes as a strange, permanent side effect of his displacement. He’d never imagined they were the very reason he could order tea, talk to Yin, or understand the mutterings of a street vendor.

John: “Anyone I look at… But, there are people I understand even when I’m looking away,” he countered, thinking of conversations held while gazing out a window.

Onyx: “You need only establish the connection once, even with a fleeting glance. The bond of understanding is then permanent. But,” they continued, his finger tapping the silver skull on his cane, “the problem you have presented, which I now comprehend, is that written words do not possess sentience. At least, not in this particular world. Therefore, the Eyes of Communion have no consciousness upon which to act. The symbols remain just that—meaningless shapes on a page. You cannot read them because, to your gift, they are not truly speaking."

John: “Oh, um, okay. Um, can you make it so I can read this world’s language, then?” he asked, the words feeling small and vulnerable in the face of Onyx’s cosmic indifference.

Onyx turned his head slowly, a sinister, knowing smile stretching his lips. It was a smile that didn’t belong on a human face, a contortion that seemed to siphon the warmth from the air around them, raising goosebumps on John’s arms.

Onyx: “Well,” they began, his voice a silken whisper, “I would have to give you new eyes for that. Which means removing the current eyes…”

Suddenly, a cold, immense pressure enveloped John. It was not the pressure of hands, but of reality itself solidifying around him. He was locked in place, every muscle frozen, a fly trapped in invisible amber. He couldn’t twitch a finger, couldn’t turn his head. Only his frantic, panicked breathing and the pounding of his heart remained under his control.

Onyx leaned in close again, his crimson eyes filling John’s vision. This time, there was no escape. John watched, helpless, as Onyx raised a hand. The movement was languid, almost ceremonial. His thumb and index finger extended, moving with a terrible, deliberate slowness toward John’s right eye.

“No. No, no, no, stop!” John’s mind screamed, a silent litany of pure terror. He tried to struggle, to plead, to beg, but his body was no longer his to command.

He felt the cold, dry tips of Onyx’s fingers press against the tender corner of his eye. The pressure increased, a dull, invasive ache that quickly sharpened into a blinding, white-hot spike of pain. With a wet, sickening squelch, the fingers pushed past his eyelid and into the socket itself. A hot trickle of blood oozed down his cheek, the sensation horrifyingly vivid.

John wanted to scream from the agony of it, but his vocal cords were paralyzed. All he could do was endure the sensation of Onyx’s fingers scooping and digging inside his skull. His vision on the right side became a jumbled, nauseating mess of extreme close-ups of Onyx’s face, while his left eye watched in horror as his own eyeball was slowly, methodically pulled from its socket, the optic nerve stretching like a bloody, pink elastic band.

The pain was immeasurable, a violation on every level. He felt the nerve fibers strain, one by one, until, with a final, gut-wrenching snap, it gave way. The connection was severed. The pain was indescribable.

Onyx held the extracted eye up, examining it with a detached, alien curiosity. John remained frozen, a statue of agony, his mind a silent, endless scream.

Lunar: “Woof!” his bark was a sharp, percussive crack in the silent horror.

Suddenly, the pressure vanished. Onyx’s fingers, which had been inches from John’s face, pulling out an eye that was no longer there, simply pulled back.

John yelled, a raw, guttural sound ripped from his throat as he tumbled backward, landing hard on the pavement. He scrambled away, his hands flying to his face, patting frantically at his eyes. They were both there. Intact. There was no blood, no pain, no wetness. His vision was clear. He looked up at Onyx, his chest heaving, his entire body trembling with adrenaline and residual terror.

Onyx looked back, his expression once again a mask of calm.

Onyx: “Though, I have just learned that the removal of eyes is a… painful ordeal for your kind. So, unless you wish to undergo such a trial, I would recommend… learning the language the way humans normally do.”

John stared, his mind reeling. What had that been? A hyper-realistic illusion? A premonition of a potential future? Or something else entirely?

He didn’t know. He didn’t care to know. The only thing John was certain of, as he shakily got to his feet, was that he wouldn’t be asking Onyx for a single damn thing for a very, very long time. If ever.